'Trump Doctrine': President's foreign policy against 'endless wars' lands him third Nobel Peace nomination
President Donald Trump, who is set to face the election in little over a month’s time, got yet another nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday, September 28. It is the third nomination for the prize next year and it came from Australian law professors who praised the president over his doctrine against “endless wars”. Professor David Flint appeared on Britain’s SkyNews on the issue over the weekend, calling the “Trump Doctrine” as “something extraordinary”. By the doctrine, he meant that the president no longer desires to see the US engaged in endless wars - “wars which achieve nothing but the killing of thousands of young Americans and enormous debts imposed on America, and nothing solved in the countries in which it is carried on.” He said through the doctrine, Trump was reducing Washington’s tendency to get stuck in “any and every war”.
Trump himself was elated as he tweeted saying: “The “Trump Doctrine” earns President Trump a third Nobel Peace Prize Nomination!” He tagged conservative TV journalist Lou Dobbs in his tweet.
The “Trump Doctrine” earns President Trump a third Nobel Peace Prize Nomination! @LouDobbs
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 29, 2020
The “Trump Doctrine”, however, has not made the headlines for the first time. In April 2017, just three months after the Republican took office, the Time magazine came up with a piece titled ‘What is the ‘Trump Doctrine’?’ In the piece penned by Zeke Miller, it was said that the White House “sought to define the “Trump Doctrine”’ with former chief of staff Reince Priebus citing the newly elected president’s handling of conflicts in Syria and the pariah state of North Korea as his foreign policy vision which was taking shape.
“What the Administration described though was less a clearly articulated doctrine, than it was a patchwork effort to place Trump’s actions under a single ideological framework, centered largely around his transactional view of the world,” the article said.
Two months before the Time piece came out, an opinion piece in the Guardian titled 'Donald Trump's doctrine of unpredictability has the world on edge' came up with an observation on Trump’s foreign policy and it used one word to describe it: “Unpredictable”, something which Trump also prefers.
Michale H Fuchs, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs who worked with former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, said in that piece: “Trying to piece Donald Trump’s foreign policy together, one cannot be blamed for missing the grand strategy in it all. Maybe Trump is a realist; or maybe he wants to dismantle the US-led international order. Perhaps he is purely a dealmaker. Whatever the approach, one theme is consistent in Trump’s actions and words: his desire to make US foreign policy appear as unpredictable as possible. As Trump so succinctly summarized it himself during a foreign policy speech in April 2016: 'We have to be unpredictable'.”
This brings us to the question: What exactly is the “Trump Doctrine”?
Doctrines are something that American presidents across generations have been identified with. It is a framework under which a particular president decides to operate his foreign policy in the given reality. According to international affairs strategist George Friedman, sometimes a president is forced to work under a specific doctrine while at other times, he can proclaim his own doctrine. “In both cases, doctrines ought to be seen not as strokes of genius or decisions made at the will of the president but as actions imposed on him and dictated by reality,” Friedman said in a piece he wrote for Geopolitical Futures in July 2018.
From Monroe Doctrine to Trump Doctrine
There have been several doctrines that American presidents have come up with over the time. From the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 to Roosevelt Corollary (an extension of Monroe Doctrine) in 1904 to Truman Doctrine in 1948 and Nixon Doctrine of 1969 to the Bush Doctrine of the early 21st century - they have displayed the changes in the US’s foreign policy priorities and changes over the centuries.
Obama, the first president who took over after the US was dragged into “endless wars” in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), never outlined a doctrine himself as such, but experts deduced from his actions a coherent policy to bring down America’s military involvement in the Middle East and reduce the hostility between Washington and the Islamic world. The experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq proved that the US was not getting much success militarily in its conflicts with the Islamic world and it was also limiting its ambitions abroad.
Trump's troops-withdrawing move has also faced flak
Trump did not face a situation much different from Obama. He faced a challenge in defusing situations that seek military actions and offensive economic policies even while caring little about opinions from abroad. Trump has spoken in favor of ending “endless wars” abroad earlier as well but he has faced challenges while trying to execute it. For instance, when he withdrew forces from some parts of Syria last year, he was accused at home and abroad of betraying the Kurds, who have been America’s allies in that country and leaving them at the mercy of Turkey’s onslaught. Trump has also expressed his intention to pull out troops from Afghanistan by the time the election is here but the breakdown of the US’s peace talks with the Taliban would make that difficult to accomplish yet. The critics of Trump’s doctrine would not be happy with America’s withdrawal from endless wars abroad because they see enemies like Russia, China and other local powers gaining strategic advantage from that. The president has shown less inclination towards Nato, often accusing the US’s traditional allies of not taking enough responsibilities themselves, which has disappointed the allies but made Kremlin very happy.
The challenges in reality have also seen Trump nullifying the so-called “Trump Doctrine” at times. For instance, in August 2017, he announced to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan while ordering missile attacks at government bases and sites as a retaliation against Bashar al Assad’s atrocities against his own countrymen. He also launched a scathing verbal attack on North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, threatening the latter’s country with “fire and fury”.
Eventually, Trump did not announce any fresh war on any country and even sat with Kim on more than one occasion. He has also facilitated peace between Israel and two Arab nations in recent times that also earned him a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. He also got his second nomination for helping secure a deal to normalize economic relations between Serbia and Kosovo. He has also expressed intention to mediate in problems between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and between India and China over their border disputes.
These moves show that Trump’s doctrine eyes peace patchwork across the globe, which is a departure from the more hawkish stances that the White House has taken in the past but it is yet to be confirmed whether his pursuit to withdraw the US from “endless wars” is an effective policy.